


Waiting

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Crack Pairing, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 03:06:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barbrey's knife is well-traveled.<br/>Written for the got_exchange's comment/fic meme on LiveJournal for the prompt:  Petyr/Barbrey, my knife is sharp.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting

She never tells him about the knife under her mattress. It’s an old friend, one that has been her companion for many years. It comforted her when Willam was called away to war, and she kept it by her side during the long days, and clutched loosely in her hands during longer nights. It was a failsafe, security, protection against indignity, for victory was fleeting, and Northmen, as she had seen with Brandon, and his lord father, were fragile. Any dragon who would try to burn down the walls of her wooden town would soon find it buried in his heart. 

It was with her when she at last slept within the Walls of Winterfell, and while the circumstances were not those of her girlhood fantasies, the last of those really, or the wedding what she had envisioned in her secret thoughts, she drew a sort of calm satisfaction from the neatness of things. 

_Here I am at last. Still alive_ , she thought, sitting in the crypts in front of blank-eyed statues that bore little resemblance to men she had once known, the dampness weighing down her skirts, threatening to rust the blade that she turned idly in her fingers. 

And it was with her when she struck at the heart of it, when she wrote her betrayal, her victory, large. That night she had thrust it home with a calmness that she had never known that she possessed. When her brother-in-law fell to the mattress, hands doing nothing to stanch the scarlet stream that poured from the wound that she had made, Barbrey finally unclenched her hand. It clattered to the floor, the blade red. 

_Blood for my sister, blood for her son_ , she thought quietly, as she watched Roose Bolton die. _Blood for the north, for you have let enough._

And in this queer, quiet place, this castle in the sky, she conceals it carefully. Petyr knows not what she has done, and it would not help her cause if he were to suspect. And it is not unusual, to conceal. It is not a lie, just a sweet omission. And they all wear masks. Lord Baelish with his sweeping gestures and tight smiles. Alayne, with her lowborn garb and highborn courtesies. The servants, the Maester, who turn their faces when the invalid boy is dosed too highly on dreamwine. 

So she permits him to share her bed, and little by little, they unravel each other. Not all the way, but just enough to delude each other that there is confidence, that there is some semblance of decency in the way that they use each other. And when he drowses after the act, Barbrey thinks on the blade that she has hidden, lying in wait beneath them. It is clean now, polished to a shine, whetted to a fine point. And it is waiting.


End file.
